He [Perry] said relief workers "report no general dissatisfaction" in the North despite U.S. estimates that famine has killed 2 million North Koreans in this decade.

International officials have said North Korean farm mismanagement and the collapse of the former Soviet Union have caused food shortages for years. But when it asked for international help in 1995, the North Korean government blamed the famine on flooding.

Yet "the conditions for a popular revolt do not exist in that country, even though the deprivation is widespread," he said.